Marie Larkin
Painter, Illustrator, Mixed Media Artist (Moore Creek, NSW)

I am a Visual Arts graduate with thirty years experience in artistic practice.  I had success in the 1990's as an embroiderer with a number of group and solo shows and two touring exhibitions through regional galleries in Tasmania, Victoria and New South Wales. My work was featured in Textile Fibre Forum, The Land and Masters of their Craft, a coffee table book by art historian, Norris Iannou. I have won The Dame Nancy Buttfield Embroidery Prize and The Namoi Valley Cotton Fibre Acquisitive Award. Through the Regional Galleries exhibition tour of Revealing Threads I was the recipient of a $10,000 Australia Council Grant that allowed me to travel to various towns and cities to give workshops.

My body of work from 2010 is a highly stylised and illustrative collection of small and large oil paintings, drawing and sculptures.  Rhyme and Reason is a play on familiar fairytales and nursery rhymes; twisting and subverting the childhood narratives so my doe-eyed, whimsical female characters are centre stage. Sandra McMahon, Director of the Tamworth Regional Gallery had this to say about Rhyme and Reason,   “The female characters…have very different personalities …the eyes make the characters individual and colour is really important in the works, it sets the tone and the scene for the nursery rhyme. The attention to detail is really quite important in each of the works, there is an incredible amount of detail, the grain of the floorboards and the cracks in the walls. These works are so beautifully crafted and technically competent, they are very finely executed….they are extraordinary.”

Contact Marie Larkin
Visit Marie Larkin's website

Artists Statement:
I think the narrative is an important quality in art. I like to create an alternate world to escape to and I love nothing better than painting my female characters set in their little worlds full of tiny hills and lakes, and houses and roads that don’t really exist except in my imagination. I have a naturally illustrative style and a great love of detail and embellishment coupled with a great desire to render convincingly. Over the past few years the paintings I have done have been quite realistic, almost photographic, and as I have been painting almost continually over the past twelve months they have become increasingly stylised while still retaining that convincing rendering of form and detail. 

2010 Exhibitions
Ladies First Group Show - Brunswick Street Gallery, Melbourne
Group Show – Global Gallery, Sydney
Solo Show - Berkelouw Books Cafe and Artspace

2011 Exhibitions and Press           
Creative Conscience Fundraising Event
Rhyme and Reason Solo Show